We live by kindness & clear expectations. Also fun, mountains, waterfalls and an extremely creamy, soft, blue French brie but that’s a conversation for another day (preferably overlooking the sea).
Work with us
We’ve got a few beliefs and guidelines we stick to, to deliver you the best work, get along so well we'd love to hang out after our project ends, and for us to all enjoy our lives.
We are so privileged to gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos. So ring the bells that still can ring, forget our perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in (Leonard Cohen).
1. We’re perfectionists who know that nothing is ever perfect.
Ideas are dynamic. The world keeps moving. Humans keep changing. So does technology. Data shifts over time. So do our thoughts. We strive to understand and strategize the big picture, whilst focussing on the little details that make it so. We're obsessed with solving problems and the little things. The little things make the big things. We also appreciate nothing is ever done, but we strive to have certain things done. And then move onto the next thing, and refine, change, adjust and align over time.
2. We might side with your users & customers.
It’s not personal, we promise, but your customers, users and readers are why we do what we do. Unless of course we’re creating your internal experiences. In which case it’s you and the people affected. We want to meet your goals and create the best possible results for you. We also want to chat with your customers in some kind of way. Ask questions. Of them. Of you. Get you thinking. Get us rethinking. Sometimes this means we’ll push the focus more to the user or employee or vendor (whomever is central to your problem & goal) so that we can do right by them, and consequently right by you.
3. The process is what drives us.
When a process drives a thought, an idea, a project, an experiment, we might not know exactly where we’re going but will figure out everything we’ve been seeking answers to and where we should be heading. We go deep. Then we fly up and take a look again before we dive back down with that picture in mind. Things of value are always buried in the depths. We trust the process.
4. We spend a lot of time at our desks. And a lot of time away from them.
Growth, creativity and ideas happen late at night when you’ve pushed past every other ‘logical’ idea. They happen on midnight walks to metal-playing cafes that serve huge choc-chip-chunk cookies and in their words, your wanky almond milk at 2am even though you normally only listen to Leonard Cohen (thank you, Death Before Decaf). They happen with strangers in Ubers. In cafes with your sketch pad. Under the shower. The waterfall kind too. Too much of our time is so easily buried in an endless cycle of doing; mostly on things that aren't getting us anywhere. We seek out a world where we all have time to wake up with a fresh juice, move our bodies, work passionately on projects and do the things that light us up. We believe this will change the way we all feel and choose to live.
5. We trust you, trust us.
We’ve done this for many, many years. We keep training and exploring and researching and studying. You know your people, we know our craft. Most of our values will be similar. We share a lot of common ground. But always saying yes is lazy. We like to dare to say no when it’s needed. We love collaborating, but that doesn’t mean we’ll always find a consensus. You hired us to do this and we can’t wait to do it.
6. We seek freedom.
We work for it, we live it and we breathe it. The open road. The space to explore designs and decisions. The freedom to fail and pursue the next option. The time to chase ideas. And sometimes lovers. We’re chained to nothing but the desire for more freedom. This also means we are kind-of-masters (are we allowed to say that?) at distilling the complex into functional and effective simplicity and taking big, difficult ideas and turning them into digestible pieces.
7. We get paid so our mothers don’t worry.
Most of our projects take at least 3 months, average around the large part of a year, and our partnerships last for many years thereafter. We work hard, extremely hard, and sweat over the details a lot. We’re also constantly thinking numerous steps ahead and strategizing future opportunities. Nobody doing this ethically gets famously rich from this but we do have bills to pay, flights to catch and charities to support in our efforts to make the world a more equal place.
8. Not our circus, not our monkeys.
No drama, no toxicity. There is a saying that goes you either invite drama, create it, or accept it. We choose for none of these. We also choose not to allow toxic people to orbit our worlds. An easy test of this in your own life? When you spend time with someone are you energized, do you feel your chest expanding, or are you deflated, can you feel yourself contracting? One is nourishing, the other is toxic. With kindness and firm boundaries, you get to choose which you have in your life.
9. We stand on the shoulders of many.
Without the invention of the internet, we would not have these jobs, and likely we would not be working with you. We are also enormously grateful to the open source development community who have to be some of the bravest, kindest and most inspiring people we know. We thank them each day for their contributions to our world. As a female run team, without the powerful, brave women who stood up in our history and fought without ever knowing or seeing the outcome, we would not have the right or the place to do this at all. Without people of color, our indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, our team, our thinking & our world would not be this wise, this meaningful or this beautiful. We place a high value on diversity, empathy and acceptance of all beings and our environment. On that note, if you vote, mostly just to reduce your taxes, or for largely religous reasons, knowing that to do so is to vote in favor of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, disempowering or a loss of rights to women, people of color & minority groups, or devaluing climate change action or the environment, you need to think again. Or at the least skip over us.
10. We like our environment
Really, we do, a lot. Lis even photographs her favorite parts. We believe businesses - of all shapes and sizes - have a responsibilty to our environment. If you are creating products that damage our Earth, you are responsible for that. Most items have alternatives - we can help you with this. There are of course still many that don't but we can provide you options of materials that have reduced impacts, strategies for recycling or are more ethically made. We believe in being transparent about this. We're here to help you but know that we absolutely won't be helping you market plastic single-use products (these should not exist) or items made from child or slave labor.
11. Idealism, then realism.
We believe in lofty goals and high ambitions. We also think there should be a roadmap and strategy towards them. We also understand things change, markets suddenly move and you might need to pivot, capitalize, or develop new products and services. We look at the big picture, the future plans and ideas and then make them work in the current time, whilst allowing for the growth. We're also big on blending training and education with practicality. There's no use implementing the fanciest system that nobody is going to use no matter how often we hold trainings - we'd rather uncover the one that your company adopts and a year later thinks how did we ever do without it?.
12. We don't know.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb says we should not be afraid of saying this more often. We feel he is right. We do not know many things. We cannot possibly know. We like not always knowing or being certain. We research. We find data. We keep learning.
13. Give us your problems.
We are solution finders. Come to us with your problems. We often can’t produce answers on the spot (we may have found the magic button to solve all the world's problems if we could!) but through our process we will come up with the right answers, with you.
Get the mails
We'd love to hear what you believe in and what you're working on . Hit reply and tell us all about it! Jump on and Lis will give you thoughts with values like this + internet finds, resources, behind the scenes, what we're currently working on and more. No fancy optins, no gimmicks. Just the words between us on the screen.